Posted by PsychoSage on February 15, 2004, at 4:30:04
In reply to Re: Are SSRI's the right choice for me?, posted by Maxime on February 14, 2004, at 11:50:41
I have been on medical leave from university many times, and I am on one now.
I have been on Zoloft, wellbutrin and other serotonin drugs like serzone, the SSRi celexa and effexor.
I don't want to have anything to do with anything that involves serotonin. None of them have been very helpful in my opinion.
They dull me and zoloft made me sleep an extra hour every night. I have been up to 150mg with zoloft. The last time I went back on it I was between 50 and 100. It still gave me the same side effects which are a little different than yours.
I am newly bipolar, and it took 5.5 years for me to get on my first mood stabilizer. That may be the ticket for you since OCD can overlap with bipolar and you are young enough to have a partial diagnosis. It takes 8 years for bipolars to get diagnosed from the first time they get treated for mental illness. Many start out as unipolar depressives. I was diagnosed with major depressive first, then amphetamine-induced psychotic disorder, then schizoaffective, and now I am basically bipolar 2 I think. I am not sure what my current diagnosis is or if they matter since I have had all the major symtoms of many major disorders including inattention and anxiety.
I would look into a mood stabilizer. Antipsychotics are horrible drugs in my opinion. Stay away if you are not psychotic. There are other ways to treat mania and anything else they say an antipsychotic can fix.
I take trileptal. I am not sure if it helps, but supposedly these anticonvulsants work well on anxiety, prevent mania and buffer against depression.
Many SSRIs switch bipolars into mania occasionally. This is common knowlege now.
I personally want to cut back on all the drugs and lower the doses just so it is not so confusing because I feel that taking several at once has to be excessive. I guess being a patient means adding and subtracting these scripts is an unavoidable part of life that lasts forever.
poster:PsychoSage
thread:312484
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040215/msgs/313498.html